2016 Democratic Party presidential primaries
and caucuses were organized by the Democratic Party to select the 4,051 delegates to the 2016 Democratic National Convention held July 25–28 and determine the nominee for President in the 2016 United States presidential election. The elections took place within all fifty U.S. states, the District of Columbia, five U.S. territories, and Democrats Abroad and occurred between February 1 and June 14, 2016. This was the first time the Democratic primary had nominated a woman for president.
Six major candidates entered the race starting April 12, 2015, when former Secretary of State and New York Senator Hillary Clinton formally announced her second bid for the presidency. She was followed by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, former Governor of Maryland Martin O'Malley, former Governor of Rhode Island Lincoln Chafee, former Virginia Senator Jim Webb and Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Lessig. A draft movement was started to encourage Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren to seek the presidency. Warren declined to run, as did incumbent Vice President Joe Biden. Webb, Chafee, and Lessig withdrew prior to the February 1, 2016, Iowa caucuses.
Clinton won Iowa by the closest margin in the history of the state's Democratic caucus to date. O'Malley suspended his campaign after a distant third-place finish, leaving Clinton and Sanders as the only two candidates. The race turned out to be more competitive than expected, with Sanders decisively winning New Hampshire, while Clinton subsequently won Nevada and won a landslide victory in South Carolina. Clinton then secured numerous important wins in each of the nine most populous states including California, New York, Florida, and Texas, while Sanders scored various victories in between. He then laid off a majority of staff after the New York primary and Clinton's multi-state sweep on April 26. On June 6, the Associated Press and NBC News stated that Clinton had become the presumptive nominee after reaching the required number of delegates, including both pledged and unpledged delegates, to secure the nomination. In doing so, she became the first woman to ever be the presumptive nominee of any major political party in the United States. On June 7, Clinton secured a majority of pledged delegates after winning in the California and New Jersey primaries. President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Elizabeth Warren endorsed Clinton on June 9. Sanders confirmed on June 24 that he would vote for Clinton over Donald Trump in the general election and endorsed Clinton on July 12 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
On July 22, WikiLeaks published the Democratic National Committee email leak, in which DNC operatives seemed to deride Bernie Sanders' campaign and discuss ways to advance Clinton's nomination, leading to the resignation of DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and other implicated officials. The leak was allegedly part of an operation by the Russian government to undermine Hillary Clinton. Although the ensuing controversy initially focused on emails that dated from relatively late in the primary, when Clinton was already close to securing the nomination, the emails cast doubt on the DNC's neutrality and, according to Sanders operatives and multiple media commentators, showed that the DNC had favored Clinton since early on. This was evidenced by alleged bias in the scheduling and conduct of the debates, as well as controversial DNC–Clinton agreements regarding financial arrangements and control over policy and hiring decisions. Other media commentators have disputed the significance of the emails, arguing that the DNC's internal preference for Clinton was not historically unusual and did not affect the primary enough to sway the outcome, as Clinton received over 3 million more popular votes and 359 more pledged delegates than Sanders. The controversies ultimately led to the formation of a DNC "unity" commission to recommend reforms in the party's primary process.
On July 26, 2016, the Democratic National Convention officially nominated Clinton for president and a day later, Virginia Senator Tim Kaine for vice president. Clinton and Kaine went on to lose to the Republican ticket of Donald Trump and Mike Pence in the general election.
Candidates
Nominee
Withdrew at the convention
Withdrew during the primaries
Withdrew before the primaries
Other candidates' results
The following candidates were frequently interviewed by news channels and were invited to forums and candidate debates.For reference, Clinton received 16,849,779 votes in the primaries.
Other candidates participated in one or more state primaries without receiving major coverage or substantial vote counts.
Timeline
Background
In the weeks following the re-election of President Obama in the 2012 election, media speculation regarding potential candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination in the 2016 presidential election began to circulate. The speculation centered on the prospects of Clinton, then-Secretary of State, making a second presidential bid in the 2016 election. Clinton had previously served as a U.S. Senator for New York and was the First Lady of the U.S.. A January 2013 Washington Post–ABC News poll indicated that she had high popularity among the American public.This polling information prompted numerous political pundits and observers to anticipate that Clinton would mount a second presidential bid in 2016, entering the race as the early front-runner for the Democratic nomination. From the party's liberal left wing came calls for a more progressive candidate to challenge what was perceived by many within this segment as the party's establishment. Elizabeth Warren quickly became a highly touted figure within this movement as well as the object of a draft movement to run in the primaries, despite her repeated denials of interest in doing so.
The MoveOn.org campaign 'Run Warren Run' announced that it would disband on June 8, 2015, opting to focus its efforts toward progressive issues. The draft campaign's New Hampshire staffer, Kurt Ehrenberg, had joined Sanders' team and most of the remaining staffers were expected to follow suit. Given the historical tendency for sitting vice presidents to seek the presidency in election cycles in which the incumbent president is not a candidate, there was also considerable speculation regarding a potential presidential run by incumbent Vice President Joe Biden, who had previously campaigned for the Democratic presidential nomination in the election cycles of 1988 and 2008.
This speculation was further fueled by Biden's own expressions of interest in a possible run in 2016. However, on October 21, 2015, speaking from a podium in the Rose Garden with his wife and President Obama by his side, Biden announced his decision not to enter the race, as he was still dealing with the loss of his son, Beau, who died months earlier at the age of 47. Biden became the nominee for the Democratic Party four years later in the 2020 presidential election where he became the 46th President of the United States after defeating incumbent president Donald Trump in the general election.
On May 26, 2015, Sanders officially announced his run as a presidential candidate for the Democratic nomination, after an informal announcement on April 30 and speculation since early 2014. Sanders had previously served as Mayor of Burlington, Vermont, Vermont's sole U.S. Representative and Vermont's junior Senator. He emerged as the biggest rival to Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries, backed by a strong grassroots campaign and a social media following.
In November 2014, Jim Webb, a former U.S. Senator who had once served as the U.S. Secretary of the Navy during the Reagan administration, announced the formation of an exploratory committee in preparation for a possible run for the Democratic presidential nomination. This made Webb the first major potential candidate to take a formal action toward seeking the party's 2016 nomination.
In June 2015, Lincoln Chafee, former Governor and Senator of Rhode Island, announced his campaign. Chafee had been a Republican while serving in the senate, and an Independent while serving as Governor. He formed an exploratory committee on April 3. Chafee endorsed Barack Obama in 2008 and served as co-chair of his re-election campaign in 2012.
Martin O'Malley, former Governor of Maryland as well as a former Mayor of Baltimore, made formal steps toward a campaign for the party's nomination in January 2015 with the hiring and retaining of personnel who had served the previous year as political operatives in Iowa – the first presidential nominating state in the primary elections cycle – as staff for his political action committee. O'Malley had started the "O' Say Can You See" PAC in 2012 which had, prior to 2015, functioned primarily as fundraising vehicles for various Democratic candidates, as well as for two 2014 ballot measures in Maryland. With the 2015 staffing moves, the PAC ostensibly became a vehicle for O'Malley – who had for several months openly contemplated a presidential bid – to lay the groundwork for a potential campaign for the party's presidential nomination.
In August 2015, Lawrence Lessig unexpectedly announced his intention to enter the race, promising to run if his exploratory committee raised $1 million by Labor Day. After accomplishing this, Lessig formally announced his campaign. He described his candidacy as a referendum on electoral reform legislation, prioritizing a single issue: the Citizen Equality Act of 2017, a proposal that couples campaign finance reform with other laws aimed at curbing gerrymandering and ensuring voting access.
Overview
February 2016: early primaries
Despite being heavily favored in polls issued weeks earlier, Clinton was only able to defeat Sanders in the first-in-the-nation Iowa Caucus by the closest margin in the history of the contest: 49.84% to 49.59%. Clinton collected 700.47 state delegate equivalents to Sanders' 696.92, a difference of one-quarter of a percentage point. This led to speculation that she won due to six coin-toss tiebreakers all resulting in her favor. However, the only challenge to the caucus' results was in a single precinct, which gave Clinton a fifth delegate.| Date | State/territory | Clinton | Sanders |
| February 1 | Iowa | 49.8% | 49.6% |
| February 9 | New Hampshire | 38.0% | 60.4% |
| February 20 | Nevada | 52.6% | 47.3% |
| February 27 | South Carolina | 73.5% | 26.0% |
The victory, which was projected to award her 23 pledged national convention delegates, two more than Sanders, made Clinton the first woman to win the Caucus and marked a clear difference from 2008, where she finished in third place behind Obama and John Edwards. Martin O'Malley suspended his campaign after a disappointing third-place finish with only 0.5% of the state delegate equivalents awarded, leaving Clinton and Sanders the only two major candidates in the race. A week later, Sanders won the New Hampshire primary, receiving 60.4% of the popular vote to Clinton's 38%, putting him ahead of Clinton in the overall pledged delegate count by four, and making him the first Jewish candidate of a major party to win a primary. Hillary Clinton's loss in New Hampshire was a regression from 2008, when she defeated Obama, Edwards, and a handful of other candidates including Joe Biden, with 39% of the popular vote.
Sanders' narrow loss in Iowa and victory in New Hampshire generated speculation about a possible loss for Clinton in Nevada, the next state to hold its caucuses on February 20. For her part, Clinton, who had won the state eight years prior in the 2008 Nevada Democratic caucuses, hoped that a victory would allay concerns about a possible repetition of 2008 when she ultimately lost to Obama despite entering the primary season as the favorite for the nomination. Ultimately, Clinton emerged victorious with 52.6% of the county delegates, a margin of victory similar to her performance in 2008. Sanders, who attained 47.3% of the vote, was projected to receive five fewer pledged delegates than Clinton. The result was not promising for the following weekend's primary in South Carolina, more demographically favorable to Clinton than the prior contests. On February 27, Clinton won the South Carolina primary with 73.5% of the vote, receiving a larger percentage of the African American vote than Barack Obama had eight years earlier – 90% to Obama's 80%.